What You See Is Not Always What You Have

Telecom companies are facing an average of 15% to 30% discrepancies among listed access records and actual physical connections

Copper wire-line infrastructure serves as the foundation of carrier services across the local loop and is the most important asset the telco possesses. However, the large numbers of remotely spread wire-pairs are usually more than 50 years-old and, while originally designed for voice, have been recently exploited for data. The limited visibility that carriers have into their infrastructure requires significant effort and cost to maintain. In addition, information about the physical layer of the network has often been maintained manually, allowing errors to creep into the databases, which subsequently were not checked for accuracy. Couple this with dwindling revenue margins, massive investments in shortening the local loop and major efforts to improve customer service and the battle to maintain profits is taken to every phone call, from every customer.

Many incumbent telecom companies know about these issues and are currently happy to put up with them, but they do not fully appreciate the implications of such an inaccurately maintained network database on current and future revenue flows. If only they could really reach all of their customers, their margins would grow significantly. It sounds simple, but the facts paint a much more sinister story.

The copper infrastructure is the physical foundation on which a carrier's daily operations are built. Consisting of millions of cables, the copper infrastructure is the link between service provider and customer. Knowing where each customer is located and having a clear picture of the network resources being utilized to provide that customer with service, is the ABC of service provision.

Monitoring such large physical infrastructures poses an enormous challenge to telecom operators because they have no accurate method of determining which existing lines are in operation, when a line goes down or where the spare capacity resides in any single main distribution frame (MDF). This problem is compounded when carriers try to prepare their existing infrastructures for subsequent upgrades to next generation network topologies.

This gives rise to inaccurate information about the existing wire-line infrastructure assets in the field and their potential usage. This has a direct impact on digital service deployment, resulting in lower revenues due to customers’ denied service, significantly increased operating costs, reduced service levels to the customers and inefficient network asset utilization.

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